


blueberry lollipop

by spj



Category: K-pop, UNIQ (Band)
Genre: M/M, also hinted seungyoun/wenhan, but not like insane angst, just like a bit of a sigh, okay actually probably mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 10:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3892198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spj/pseuds/spj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>yixuan is in love. sungjoo is too, but not with yixuan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blueberry lollipop

**Author's Note:**

> i kind of just wanted this out of my folders  
> yay
> 
> not really a happy ending, sorry :/ i just didnt really feel like writing anymore so i figured may as well get rid of it oTL

“No,” Sungjoo says.

Seungyeon laughs and bounces up and down, waving his hands around. “No, no, I _swear_ this works.”

Sungjoo just glares.

“C'moon,” Seungyeon needles. “Aren't you a theater major or something? You can do this. Say it to me.”

Sungjoo sighs. Tries to arrange his face so he looks slightly less like he's swallowed an entire pack of Supreme Sour Patch Kids. Opens his mouth and... “Oh my god, I can't do this,” he says, choking back embarrassed giggles.

“Hyuuung,” Seungyeon whines. “I can't help you if you don't give it all of your heart.”

“Is that what you say to everyone?” Sungjoo demands, shaking off the last of the laughter and straightening again. “How can you even say it with a straight face?”

Seungyeon blinks. “I believe it.”

He _believes_ it. Sungjoo is too old to deal with this kid. He takes a deep breath. “Noona, I'm falling in love...with you. Will you go out with me?”

Seungyeon leaps into the air with a whoop. “That's it!” he says, even as Sungjoo hears uncontrolled laughter from behind him.

Sungjoo turns, excuses already on his lips, but it's just Yibo. The kid's been around since he was a high schooler coming to the college for tutoring, and he's just kind of stuck around. “Yibo, it's not—”

“I would just give her candy, hyung,” Yibo interrupts casually.

Sungjoo blinks. “What?” he says.

Yibo takes a fistful of lollipops from his coat jacket and holds them out to Sungjoo. “And then one day when you stop giving her candy, she'll wonder why.”

Sungjoo blankly accepts the candies. “Isn't that a bit underhanded?” he wonders.

Yibo shrugs. “It works.”

“Don't give your hyung weird advice, Yibo,” Sungjoo hears, and he turns to see Yixuan and Wenhan walking towards them. Sungjoo can't stop the smile from spreading across his face. Sanity has arrived.

Seungyeon bounces over to Wenhan and slings an arm over his shoulder. “Tell him I'm right, Hannie!” he demands.

“You're probably not,” Wenhan tells him, gracefully knocking Seungyeon's hand from his shoulder.

Yixuan rolls his eyes, but there is humor in his smile. “Just tell her how you feel,” he advises Sungjoo, ignoring the kids' squabbling. “And if it was meant to be, then it will go well. _Yuan fen_. 'Fate.'”

“Thanks,” Sungjoo says, a corner of his lips twitching up. “You're a good friend.”

He doesn't see how Seungyeon and Yibo flinch, or how Wenhan cuts a quick glance at Yixuan—Yixuan, who is smiling, because that is all he can do.

 

Unsurprisingly, it's Wenhan that figures it out first. Yixuan knows because it's Seungyeon who comes to confront him, and he's dragging Wenhan along, which means Wenhan must have said something to Seungyeon first.

“Is it true?” Seungyeon demands unceremoniously. With Yixuan, he's all but lost his native Korean formalities, which is normally fine with Yixuan—he'd rather his friends not treat him like an elder—but in this precise scenario, he finds himself wishing for maybe a little bit of that propriety to remain. Then maybe they wouldn't be having this conversation.

“Is what true?” he asks, because there's always that possibility that Seungyeon's asking about the existence of Santa Claus again.

Wenhan levels a stare at him and Seungyeon says impatiently, “ _Sungjoo_.”

So there is no avoiding it, then. “Yes,” Yixuan says.

Seungyeon releases a howl that makes him sound as though he were in great pain, but Yixuan knows better. He's laughing.

Wenhan waits politely for Seungyeon to calm down before telling Yixuan, “We won't tell anyone; don't worry.”

“Ah, thanks,” Yixuan says. There's isn't much else he can do, really.

Seungyeon gives Yixuan a look of undisguised pity, and in that moment, Yixuan gets a little bit angry. Not very much, but enough that it makes his lips fold tightly together and his nose scrunch up. Just a bit. But what he says is, “It'll work out. _Yuan fen_.”

Wenhan nods; he knows the expression. Seungyeon opens his mouth like he wants to ask what it means, but Wenhan drags him away before he can make a sound, and Yixuan is grateful. He doesn't need—doesn't _want—_ to hear what Seungyeon was going to say next, because he knows. And he doesn't want to hear it.

 

Yixuan spends his lunches with Sungjoo most days even though he knows it's quite possibly the dumbest thing he could do to himself because he can't resist it, and the guilt-ridden part of himself tells him that Sungjoo needs him right now. Sungjoo's maybe the most wrecked Yixuan has ever seen him, and considering this is Sungjoo, that means quite a bit.

“And she _smiled_ at me after I said that!” Sungjoo is saying. “That's a good sign, right? Right?”

Yixuan hums noncommittally. “It could be,” he acknowledges.

Sungjoo groans, plastering himself all over the table. “This is so _hard_ ,” he says.

Yixuan smiles blandly. “You could do what Seungyeon has been telling you for weeks and just ask her out,” he says. “It's unlikely she'll tell you no, and you know all this speculation is only hurting you.”

“I _can't_.”

“Why?”

Sungjoo shakes his head. “I just can't.”

“Then nothing will change,” Yixuan says, and he knows he's being too harsh now. He can't bring himself to feel guilty. “It will work out,” he says. Maybe to soften the tension. Maybe to console himself.

“You couldn't know that,” Sungjoo mutters, as petulantly as he ever gets, which, to be fair to him, is not very.

Yixuan just shrugs. “That's all I know.”

 

Wednesdays are spent with Wenhan in the basketball court. Sungjoo is much better at basketball than Yixuan is even though he's just as tall, but Sungjoo never has the time anymore. Instead, it's just Yixuan chasing after runaway balls after they bounce off the backboard or the wall—again.

“You're terrible at this,” Wenhan says again.

Yixuan scowls. “I know,” he says, throwing the ball back to Wenhan. “Why am I here?”

“It's because the neurons in your brain fired off this precise series of electrical pulses—”

“You're not funny,” Yixuan says as he smiles in spite of himself. “I know Sungjoo thinks you are, but you're not funny.”

Wenhan shrugs. “Oh well,” he says, scoring another perfect three pointer. “Nothing to be changed.”

The ball bounces up and down under the hoop, and Yixuan jogs over to pick it up. “There's always improvement.”

“Improvement sideways or upwards?” Wenhan asks, and Yixuan doesn't even pretend to know what that means.

“Just. Play ball, Wenhan,” he sighs, and slings the ball back.

“Which one?” Wenhan says, scoring another perfect three pointer, and this time Yixuan is in the right spot to catch it. The ball thuds into his hands.

It takes three more shots for Yixuan to understand what Wenhan is referring to. Wenhan went to school in America before college; Yixuan didn't. But, in English, a common metaphor is to refer to life as a ball game, “the ball's in your court,” so to speak. Wenhan is asking him to switch his frame of reference from the physical basketball game they're playing to...

Wednesdays used to be Wenhan-and-Sungjoo bonding time, brushing everyone else off to play one-on-one, creating perhaps the most unlikely friendship in the center of a basketball court, but not anymore. Sungjoo has study sessions with Hyuna and her friends now and Yixuan—Yixuan, well, he does need to leave the house once in a while.

“Why can't you guys stop harping on that,” he demands, throwing the ball back with a little more force than necessary. “It won't work. I get it. I can't _do_ anything about it!”

“Maybe you can stop killing yourself,” Wenhan says.

“I'm not—” Yixuan stops himself. Dribbles a few times. “I'm waiting it out.”

Wenhan arches an eyebrow. “By listening to him harp on and on about Hyuna? I think you deserve a little better than that, even if he doesn't know it. Seungyeon can take over and, oh look, they can even gossip in their native language.”

Yixuan grimaces. He's still picking out the nuances of English, much less Korean. Seungyeon and Sungjoo (and also Wenhan because to be honest, that kid's something of a genius) are trying to teach him, but he has only very, very basic phrases down and his listening ability is almost zero. So when Sungjoo is trying to describe something about Hyuna that can only be said in Korean, and Yixuan doesn't know enough English to even begin trying to help, they run into some difficulties.

“That isn't even a big deal,” Yixuan insists, throwing the ball back.

Wenhan lets it fly past him. “Well,” he says. “You don't know that.”

 

Yibo isn't stupid. Maybe if he were being honest with himself he'd say he was smarter than his big _ge_ s combined, but that would be arrogant so he doesn’t say it. But he thinks it, and he doesn’t think he's smarter than Wenhan, at any rate.

What that all means is that he sees things. He wasn't surprised the way Seungyeon was when he eventually found out, or sad the way Wenhan was, because he sees things. He sees how Yixuan purposely pushes himself to help Sungjoo with Hyuna because he feels like acknowledging his own feelings is reneging on his friendship with Sungjoo. He sees how Sungjoo stares at Hyuna like she's the sun, and how he never really seems to actually see her. And he sees how Wenhan, sometimes, darts quick glances at Seungyeon, questioning. That one, he doesn’t understand.

 

Sungjoo finally asks Hyuna out over Thanksgiving break. Wenhan forces Yixuan to go shoe shopping with him and Yibo before Sungjoo can find him and tell him in person and reluctantly, Yixuan agrees. Maybe it's better. For closure, and all that.

But Sungjoo manages to find him anyway (Yixuan knew he should have left for the bus earlier, he knew it) and breathless, tells him the good news. Yixuan has no choice but to congratulate him and smile.

“Where're you going?” Sungjoo finally manages to ask between a litany of words, all the same thing: Hyuna, Hyuna, Hyuna.

“Ah. Shopping. With Yibo and Wenhan.” Yixuan's bad at lying.

Sungjoo blinked, surprised. “Oh. No Seungyeon?”

Yixuan can't stop a smile. Sungjoo is a bad liar too. “I think he's busy,” he says, thinking. Seungyeon and Wenhan have been kind of weird lately, skittish and nervous around each other. He thinks that maybe as the oldest, he should pay more attention.

“Oh,” Sungjoo says again. “Then, can I come? I haven't seen Yibo-ah and Wenhan-ah in _forever_.”

Yixuan ruthlessly squashes that part of him that asks him _whose fault is that_ and says instead, “Oh yeah! They'd love that.”

Sungjoo smiles at him, huge and unguarded, and Yixuan is temporarily blinded. He's forgotten what it's like to be on the relieving end of that smile. They walk together to the bus station, Sungjoo cheerfully chattering on about whatever it was Hyuna said to him last night and this morning, Yixuan nodding at the right times. Yibo and Wenhan are already waiting for them.

Wenhan sees Sungjoo and widens his eyes at Yixuan, who can only shake his head minutely.

“Hey guys!” Sungjoo bounds over, hugging Yibo first, then Wenhan. “I have some good news!”

Wenhan plasters a smile on his face. “Oh really?”

“Yah, you could stand to sound a little more excited for me!”

“There is nothing that's exciting about you,” Wenhan shoots back, and as he and Sungjoo are bantering, Yibo sidles over to Yixuan's side.

“I'm fine,” Yixuan says, before Yibo can open his mouth.

Yibo shakes his head. Smiles. “Nah, I was asking if you wanted a lollipop.” He holds one out. Cherry. It's his favorite kind.

Yixuan can't help it; he snorts. “Thanks,” he says, and takes it.

“Eat it, ge,” Yibo advises. “It's not blueberry in disguise.”

“Can it, brat,” Yixuan says, and takes the candy.

“You know…”

Yixuan shakes his head. “No, I’m okay. I don’t need—”

Yibo snorts. “I wasn’t asking that, ge.” He holds out a fistful of lollipops. “Take them. One day, you can start giving them to him, and don’t stop until you run out.”

“I.” Yixuan hesitates. It’s the same stupid advice Yibo gave Sungjoo, and Yixuan is positive it doesn’t work, but Yibo is staring at him so intently he can’t help but wonder if Yibo knows something he doesn’t. He snorts to himself as he takes the candies and shoves them in his pocket, chiding himself for overthinking it. It's just candy. 


End file.
